This time she attacks with her elbow, digging it in my ribs. “Ow!”
“I already know where you come from.”
“And?”
“And I still put up with you. In spite of it.”
“Then you’re crazy.”
“Okay, then. I’m crazy.”
We intertwine our fingers and she pulls them to her chest. I touch my nose to hers.
“I take it back.”
“Hm?”
“You’re perfect.”
She giggles.
“Okay, then.”
ZOE
I’M NOT QUITE READY TO GET ON THE ROAD AGAIN, even if it means seeing where Will was born. The bed is warm with our bodies. The drapes over the window keep the room in a gently shadowed darkness. We lie in bed a little longer, laughing and touching. I love the way I can curl my body into him and he wraps his whole being around me and we’re like this new breed of animal.
I spend endless minutes tracing his lips with my fingers and drawing my mouth across his stubbly jaw.
“You need to shave,” I whisper. The tone of my voice changes the mood. Four words spoken just below his ear intensify everything. His hands tighten behind my back, pressing my belly closer to his.
He doesn’t answer me except to walk his fingers under the back of his T-shirt and flatten them against my skin. The warmth of his hands spreads beyond his fingers and palm, traveling in a sunburst across my shoulder blades, my ribs, my hips. I feel him in the depths of my body. I’ve never been this close to somebody who loves me.
“Can I ask you something?”
His voice is husky and low in my hair.
“Of course.”
“Your dad. I know he … pushed you around a lot. But did he ever … um, was that all he did? Not that hitting you’s a little thing. But were there other things that he did? To you?”
I pull back. I suppose it’s a natural place to go, to wonder about. But he’s asking me to think about things I don’t want to remember.
“No. Not like that. Sometimes, when he was in a good mood, he would grab me when I walked by and call me Debbie. It wasn’t very often.”
“He thought you were your mom?”
“Sometimes.”
“But he never …”
“No.”
Will brings me back to him and breathes over the top of my head.
“Does it scare you when I touch you?” A slight tremble cracks the smooth timbre of his voice.
His question is presented as self-assured, and I’m surprised when I feel the flush build in my cheeks. I know what’s behind the question. I make myself catch his eyes when I answer.
“Of course not. I trust you. This is all new to me. It’s too good and I don’t know where to put the good. I don’t want to be that way, but I can’t help it. I’m sorry.”
“Never be sorry. I will do anything to make you not scared anymore.”
“I know.” And I do know. No matter what they say about Will and about his past, no matter the anger I sometimes see in him, I know he wants to protect me, would do anything for me. It’s the same way I feel, too: protective of Will, desperate to be the answer he’s looking for. The girl who heals him. Maybe it’s presumptuous to feel that way. But maybe it’s the only way to feel.
We lie there awhile longer, not speaking, not moving, until Will rolls over and checks the alarm clock on the side table.
We reluctantly untangle ourselves, and Will goes out to double-check directions to Elko while I shower. I stand under the fierce spray of water longer than I need to because it feels so good to be clean and I know it will be a couple more days, probably, until the next shower. I’m still in the bathroom, wrapped in a skimpy white towel, when he returns. He doesn’t even take the time to drop the room key but comes straight over, lifts me onto the sink counter, and covers my exposed shoulders with whisper-kisses.
“You do things to me. You don’t even know.”
But I do know if what he’s feeling is anything like the rolling waves that are consuming me now. I grip Will with one hand and the counter with the other and take in a shaky bit of air. Then he lets go, undresses in about five seconds, and steps into the shower with a huge grin.
I feel like a trapeze artist who’s had her bar and ropes taken from her midflight. Will’s kiss and his beautiful naked body and the trembling in my legs are all a little too much to take. I slide off the counter and try to catch myself before I fall to the floor. I’m still unable to pull my eyes away from Will’s shadow through the liner as he reaches for the soap and laughs.
“Are you laughing at me?” I squawk. I laugh, too, my voice sounds so strained. Will’s laughter picks up even more.
“I can’t help it. You make me happy.”
I take one of the glasses on the counter and fill it with cold water from the tap. With a flick of my wrist, I toss the water over the curtain and drop the glass back onto the counter again. Will’s yelp follows me as I sprint out of the bathroom and race to get my clothes on. I’ve managed to get my bra and jeans on when I hear the water turn off.
Will soars across the room and tackles me on the bed. He has no towel and he gleefully rubs his wet skin all over mine. He shakes his head and drops of water fly in all directions from his black hair.
“Stop it! I’m already dry!” We’re laughing so hard that the springs under us squeak in helpless protest. “Get dressed,” I tell him in the sternest voice I can muster, even though I love looking at him.
There are scars and his tattoo and the lines of his ribs to take in. I’m glad he’s comfortable with being naked. I long to stay here and never let him put his clothes on again, just so I can look. The thought heats my chest—I want him to know how I see him, how he makes me feel. I take a hesitant breath. “I like looking at you,” I say. And I try so hard to be brazen and cool when I say it, but I know I’m blushing because of the way he’s smiling at me.
“And I love this way you are. All innocent and sweet.”
I’m proud of the way I am but also mortified that Will has leagues more experience than I do. With life, with … girls. He’s seen too much, done too much. And I’m jealous. I jut my chin out. “I’m not that shy.”
“Yes, you are. It ain’t a bad thing. I love it. You make me feel good. Important. It’s not good to be like me.”
“I love who you are.”
He fixes me with a quiet gaze and doesn’t say anything or kiss me. Just looks at me until every laugh has faded from us, then closes his eyes as though the darkness of a black hole has come upon him and he wants to welcome the vacuum like a friend.
WILL
WE CHECK OUT RIGHT BEFORE NOON AND I WALK around the car. Check the tires for tampering. Look up and down the roads. Check the rearview mirror when we leave. Nothing.
Nothing yet? Maybe just nothing and that’s it. Finally got too far to be on anyone’s radar no more.
It’s about three and a half hours to Elko, Nevada. I don’t remember nothing about the town, only that the name of it’s typed on a line on my birth certificate, below the county name and above the box with my mom’s name. There ain’t nothing written on the line marked father.
The sun is low and making it hard to see, so we stop after an hour at some run-down thrift store. Next to the glass counter is a rack with sunglasses, and we try some on. They’re two bucks a pop. I get a boring pair of black lenses and black frames, but Zoe, she gets this monstrous pair with rhinestones and cream-colored frames and pink lenses. She’s got thick, dark bangs cut in a straight line across her eyebrows, and her lips make kisses at me. She looks like a movie star.
The lady behind the counter, skin tough and dark as a worn saddle, laughs at us. You can tell she’s a smoker ’cause it’s that laugh-cough-laugh thing smokers do. She waves at us and laughs again after we pay and leave.
“Thank you for my glasses,” Zoe says, flipping the visor down and checking herself out in the mirror.
“They look good on you. Defin
itely the hottest person to ever wear them.”
We get back on the highway, and the hazy sun ain’t bothering us as much no more. Zoe practically presses her nose against the window to watch the scenery go by. We drove past the Great Salt Lake a while ago and she was pretty bummed with how ugly it was and the gray shore and lake. But there ain’t much better to look at in Nevada. Shrub and bush and more shrub, some mountain a little way off.
Then she’s got bored of the scenery and wants to look at me instead.
“You’re the best-looking thing I’ve seen,” she says, tucking her fingers in mine.
It’s a great compliment and I gotta grin ’cause of that and ’cause her cheeks turn pink.
“Can’t say something nice without blushing?” I tease. “You ain’t gotta problem calling me names.” She swats at me playfully. “I love you. Name-calling and all.”
“I love you,” she tells me.
I think about how much we’ve said that since we left. A lot. I like it. Being loved is this crazy new thing. I can’t get enough of it.
She settles her head on my arm and I turn my attention to the road and to the town that waits for us to drop in like a bomb. I’m not sure what I’m gonna find there, what I’m supposed to find. I don’t even know why Zoe thinks it’s so important to go. What for? Find my roots, discover myself? I don’t even know what the hell that’s supposed to mean. I am who I am. I’m what a whole bunch of years of crap plus this little bit of Zoe has made me.
Just gotta close the door on the place. See what’s left and move on. My mom ain’t gonna be left. I ain’t got no idea whatever happened to her. My grandma never spoke about her once. Not once. The closest I figure she ever got to talking about my mom was when she looked at me across the dinner table, that pitying look on her face, like she was sorry she ever began my line by having a daughter in the first place.
And my dad? Shit, there’s a reason I got a blank spot on my birth certificate. If there’s anything to learn about him in Elko, or anywhere else, it’s that I don’t want to be nothing like him. I ain’t really sure what it means to be a man, but it sure as hell ain’t what he thinks it is. Whoever he is.
Zoe nods off next to me, and she’s still sleeping when we pass the “Welcome to Elko” sign, but she don’t miss much. The town’s about what I figured it would be: brown and low buildings, golf course of green, and housing developments off the freeway. It’s just us and a couple of eighteen wheelers on the road. I turn off when I see some businesses to the right. Zoe wakes up then and glares at me through her rose-colored glasses ’cause I didn’t wake her sooner.
“What? There ain’t nothing to see.”
We run through a grocery store, pick up some sandwiches and chips, and I ask the guy at the checkout if he’s got a phone book. I flip through the names, figuring Misty ain’t gonna be listed. It’s been a long time since I got dumped on her doorstep. She’s probably moved away by now. And Mary Torres ain’t gonna be in here. I almost check, just to see if she’s back for some reason. Could I face her if she was? I don’t flip to the Ts, just find Mrs. Fletcher, Misty’s mom, and let that be enough. I point to the address and ask the guy how to get there. He mutters about how close it is but draws a map on the back of our receipt anyway, like we’re idiots.
We head back to the car.
I sit in the driver’s seat longer than I need to.
“Are you okay?” Zoe asks.
I don’t remember the house, what Mrs. Fletcher looks like. Don’t matter. I guess she’ll look pretty different after fourteen years, even if I could remember.
“All right. Ready to see where I was born?” Zoe pops open the bag of chips and crunches one. I figure that’s a yes. We head into a busier part of town. I got this weird feeling that if I look up at the right moment, I’m gonna see a woman with my eyes and my hair standing on the side of the road, waiting for me to come home. But the only person on the sidewalk is a short man in black cowboy boots.
Zoe points out directions and I drive where she says, but it’s stupid. I can’t get myself to tell her I don’t remember none of this, and even if I did, I don’t wanna go backward. Last night screwed with her head and now she wants me to have some good memory come alive, or something, so I don’t feel so bad no more. I knew I shouldn’t have told her about what I did to Ben.
“We should just get out of here,” I tell her as we go back over the highway. “There ain’t nothing here.”
She ignores me. I’m figuring out how stubborn she can be.
I kinda like it.
The house is yellow, a real pretty kind with white trim. None of it looks familiar: the white fence, the rosebushes, the door with the square window. What I really wanna know, though, is which of the two houses on either side used to be my mom’s. Blue or white? Squat rambler or adobe? I pick the Spanish-looking one on a hunch and race to catch up to Zoe. She’s already rung the doorbell.
“I don’t remember this place.”
But the wrinkled old woman who opens the door and stands in the shadow of the screen—that face jogs a memory from pictures or dreams or something. She looks in our eyes, then when we don’t say nothing, looks at our hands.
“You selling something?”
Zoe digs her elbow into my ribs, and her bony-ass arm hurts.
“No. We ain’t selling nothing. We’re just … I don’t know if you remember a kid you took in a long time ago …” How the hell’s a conversation like this supposed to start?
The woman steps closer. Her hand’s on the screen handle. She wrinkles her wrinkles as she gets a good look at me.
“William Torres?” she mutters. “That you? Look at you. You’re a man,” she says, and pushes on the screen. “Years’ll do that to a person. Come in, both of you. I have cookies. Not homemade, but you kids eat shit anyway. Get in here. Can’t see you too well out there.”
Zoe holds the door for me and I step into the house.
ZOE
HE LOOKS AROUND LIKE HE JUST AWOKE FROM A deep sleep. Takes in the furniture in the living room, swallows a few times, and runs his hand through his hair. I wasn’t sure he’d remember any of this, was afraid it wouldn’t do any good to come, but now I’m glad we’re here. He breathes slowly, as though he remembers the smell in the room, and catches my eye as the old woman grabs snacks from the kitchen. He takes me in his arms and kisses me in the middle of the hallway. A reassuring kind of kiss for him, I think.
“That’s sweet. This your girlfriend?” Mrs. Fletcher shoos us into the living room and we sit side by side on the couch, her across from us on the love seat.
“This is Zoe,” Will says. He opens his mouth to say more, but nothing else comes out.
“Julie. Nice to meet you. Are you from Colorado, too?”
“Colorado?” I repeat. “No, North Dakota.”
“Way up there? How’d the two of you meet, then?”
“At school. Will came to my school.”
Julie looks at Will to confirm my words. He nods and she waits for more story to come, but there is nothing but an awkward silence, during which the clock on the wall ticks away the seconds too loudly. I clear my throat, hoping Will will say something, but it’s Julie who breaks the oppressive quiet by standing and shoving cookies in our hands.
“I remember when Misty used to babysit you. Then your momma took off and didn’t come back. You were so little you probably don’t remember none of it. Folks told Misty to contact your grandma, but we all remembered Alba when she lived here, and no one said anything when Misty didn’t call her after all. Now look at you. So tall. And you got yourself a girl.”
Will fidgets with the car keys, twisting them around his finger until he winces. I’m not sure if he’s making that face at the keys or the question he asks next. “So, do you know where my mom is? Or my dad?”
Julie’s look changes and she leans close to Will. “If Mary knew who your dad was, she’d have married the guy and wouldn’t have had her nervous breakdown. That’s why Alba
abandoned her, you know. Couldn’t stand the sight of her good Catholic girl as an unmarried mom at sixteen. So she left for heaven-knows-where and Mary did her best before it got to be too much. I bet you hate her, don’t you? Your mom. But I bet she thought she was doing right by you. Misty’s always been a good girl with a smart head on her shoulders.”
I grip Will’s hand as hard as I can.
“Where’d she go? My mom.”
“Don’t know. She didn’t leave an address. Could be dead for all we know. Mary Torres was the kind of girl to let anyone talk her into anything. It’s what comes of being raised by a woman with an iron fist.”
Julie tucks a mink-gray curl behind her ear. “I’m calling Misty right now. She’s going to be floored to hear I have you in my living room again.” She picks up a phone from a side table and begins dialing. “You used to chew on that table right there. Surprised it didn’t kill you, with all the chemicals people put on furniture.”
Will and I both look at the table as Julie dials and, sure enough, the edges are ratty and missing finish. Will laughs.
“Misty, you are not going to believe who I have here—well, how in fucking hell did you know that?” Julie puts her hand over the receiver and looks our way. “She guessed it right off the bat. Says she knows you just turned eighteen. She always kept track of your birthday, you know.” She transfers her hand to her waist and gives us a saucy look. “Quiet, Misty. I’m old, I don’t got to stop cussing. What? What’s he look like? Not much like the boy we knew. Tall. He’s good-looking. He brought a girl.”
Will laughs again and it sounds like he’s on a carnival ride, with the riotous lift in his laughter rising right before the sound drops away completely.
“Yeah, you’d better talk to him.” Julie reaches the phone across the space in between the couch and the love seat. My hand goes to take it, because I’m not sure if Will is ready, but he beats me to it.
“Hello?”
There’s a scream we can all hear on the other end, then the shrill sound fades into sobs.
“Put her on speaker,” Julie demands.
Nobody but Us Page 10
